Healthcare

Yesterday I visited Calobre’s health center. The building is relatively large for a rural center, with about fifteen rooms or so in the shape of the letter ‘U’. The structure though is about fifty years old, and the government has neglected to update it. The staff have been forced to put their own money into the health center in order to ensure that it has the bare minimums. For example, its location results in several inches of flooding whenever it rains. A roof had to be put over the central area, along with drains, etc to help solve the problem. Also, there were no bathrooms before, although the doctors recently paid to have them built. Electricity is another new feature at the health center, again compliments of the staff who paid for it out of pocket. Needless to say, the health center hardly resembles anything you’d find in the US. Although there are hospitals in the cities, the nicest ones can only be afforded by very wealthy Panamanians, and most of their customers are tourists. The hospitals for the general public in the cities are definitely better of than the rural health centers, although I am sure they have many problems of their own.

Here in the district of Calobre believe it or not this is the main health center, and it has two doctors. The surrounding communties generally have small health centers of their own, but are only used on occasion (maybe once a year?) when the doctors from the main health center can make it out there. If you don’t live in the main town of Calobre and you have a health issue, your only option is to walk for hours to get to the main health center and wait to be seen, hopefully. All in all, the two doctors are responsible for the thirteen thousand people who live in Calobre.

Nature

Something that I feel I have neglected to talk about is people’s relationship with nature here. First I would like to say that for the most part, my thoughts on this matter mostly apply only to rural communities rather than the cities. In the United States, our relationship with the natural world is one of dominance. Except for the occasional natural disaster, our daily lives are not greatly affected by nature. With the help of cars, umbrellas, electricity, and air conditioning, our society doesn’t have to give much thought about the weather or our environment. Sure, if you’re planning a trip to the beach and it rains that is upsetting, but its not going to prevent you from getting to a hospital or your school. Also, our home life in relation to nature is binary. We have a house with walls, windows, and doors that prevent anything from entering, and roofs that protect us from rain. We have companies that spray for bugs, and many other conveniences which completely seperate us in our homes from the natural world.

Here in Calobre though everything is completely different. People’s home life in relation to nature is more of a continuum. You have a house, generally with windows made of cinderblock with holes and doors with gaps that let in bugs and maybe even an occasional bird. The floors are of dirt or bare concrete which is coated with dirt. People also spend a lot of time on their porches or in their yard where they are even more integrated with nature. When it rains, rivers rise and the mud worsens. Ofentimes, especially if there is not a bridge over your river, this means that you cannot travel. For example, I have a kindergarden student who has to cross a river to get to school, alone. Even a small amount of rain will mean that it is to high for him to cross and going to school that day is out. Students like him generally miss a lot of school and fall behind their classmates. Also, many people cannot afford umbrellas so they must wait in a building until the rain stops to go anywhere. The environment may affect every aspecct of someone’s life, even to the extent of what job they will have and what foods they eat, as well as the availability of electricity and other key resources like clean water.

Catching Up

This has been a very interesting last week so far. Unfortunately there are still only three working computers with internet in this town of three thousand people, so it is very difficult to get online. That being the case I have had to type up several blog entries and upload them at once, so I’m sorry for putting up so much info all in one day!

I believe that earlier I mentioned that the water at the school is possibly contaminated. The reason being that their septic tank is leaking and causing all sorts of problems. Luckily I have parasite medication given to me by the doctor I worked with last week. Although this has been going on for about three weeks now, this past Monday there was a meeting with some of the parents to discuss what to do. Since the water might not be safe to drink and the bathrooms are out of order, the parents decided to take their kids out of school until the problem is fixed. This was after the first class period had began (which on Monday I have off) and when I came out of the computer lab where I was working I saw a huge migration of children who were headed home. The students who live very far away stayed for most of the day but ended up leaving by recess. The next day many students ended up coming, but again left early. Today no one showed up, not even the majority of the teachers! I am disappointed that my last week had to be this way because I was looking forward to working with the students one last time and saying goodbye, but it looks like that won’t be possible. I guess I’ll just have to come back!

This week has also been interesting because a large team from the US Air Force have come to Calobre for six weeks to provide dental care. I only found out on Sunday when I stumbled across a mountain of equipment waiting silently in one of the community’s multipurpose rooms. The next day it seemed as though an invasion was taking place with so many people in uniform walking around such a small town! Apparently this takes place in a different South/Central American community each year which I think is great. Although many communities at least will be visited by a doctor perhaps once a year, no one ever gets to see a dentist.

Now that I’ve caught you up on this week, let me go into a little more detail about what I was up to last week. The same team that I originally came to Calobre with returned to work both in town and in the surrounding communities. Calobre is both a district of the Vergaus Province (like a county within a state) and the name of the main town center in the district. By main town center I mean it has two stores as opposed to one or none. It also has a health center with doctors from Monday through Friday whereas other towns in Calobre have a health center, but doctors only visit on occasion. Emergency care is simply non existent. Since many of these surrounding communities are in great need of help, even more so than where I am, our work focused on these areas. Each day we traveled to a different community where a pediatrician attended to the kids, we distributed supplies such as toothpaste, soap, etc, and we had fun activities for the people, amongst other things. This was a great experience, and it was really nice to travel around about since I have mainly stayed in town during my serviceship.

The Friday preceding last week was one of the most important days of my whole stay here. Part of what I paid for along with the books to start the library was a day of teacher training and special educational activities for the students of fifth and sixth grade. These two grades have collectively been reading a book called ”Tú Tienes Sangre de Campeon” (You Have Champion’s Blood) over the past several weeks. This book talks about values such as working together, not stealing, etc, and self esteem, lessons which are greatly missed here. On Friday a team of educators from Panama City came to the school and spent the whole day reviewing the book through fun games and the like. I think the kids really enjoyed it, and I hope to continue this program in the future to motivate the students to continue reading. One of the activities asked the kids to think about what they wanted to be doing in the year 2030. They were given a bunch of magazines and paper and were asked to make a small poster illustrating their future job. Although this might sound like a mundane activity for students in the US, you have to understand how unique this is for students in rural Panama. First, they don’t really have the opportunity to do something out of the box like this. Second, there isn’t really much though given to the future, something which I think restrains their progress. It was great though to hear about the kids’ ideas, and also to help teach them about setting goals etc. While the kids were in another room, a different educator was working with the school’s teachers. Up until two or three years ago, all you needed to become a teacher in Panama was a high school education. Although there are many great, hard-working teachers here who I believe are going to ultimately play a huge role in Panama’s development, I will leave it up to your imagination to think about what are schools would be like if the teachers barely had a high school education. My point is that although having someone spend a day training the teachers may seem like nothing special, I cannot express in words how important it was. All in all Friday was ground breaking for Panamanian education. Rural school never have these kinds of opportunities, typically a luxury only afforded to schools in the cities. One day though is not enough, and there remains a long uphill battle to be fought if long-lasting changes are to be brought about that truly impact the future of Panama. This was a great first step though.